


ordinary light

by fathomfive



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canonical Self-Harm, Character Study, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-01
Updated: 2020-10-01
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:34:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26752156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fathomfive/pseuds/fathomfive
Summary: A moment in time: Hirugami Sachirou in the street with bloody knuckles."Why don’t you quit?"Hoshiumi Kourai didn’t know anything about it. There was no way he understood. Maybe that was why Sachirou wanted to hear him say it again.
Relationships: Hirugami Sachirou & Hoshiumi Kourai
Comments: 9
Kudos: 26





	ordinary light

**Author's Note:**

> this is is about Hirugami's ch351 flashback, and as such, contains a brief depiction of self-harm.

Sachirou came to practice early and ran extra laps, because yesterday he had spent too long in bed and missed the first half of his morning run. During free practice he did solo passing drills, his face to the wall. The repeating impact was something to focus on. It kept him from sliding sideways into the tiredness that had threatened to overtake him all day.

Yurisei lost the practice match that afternoon. He stared at the numbers of the score, made sure to remember them. That was the space between where he was and where he should be. Coach came over while he was refilling his bottle at the cooler.

“Sachirou,” he said, “you’re not yourself today. Is something wrong?”

He didn’t know what to say to that. He was always himself, that was the problem. “I could have done better today,” he said finally. He kept his finger on the spigot while cold water glugged into the bottle.

“Of course,” Coach said. “So could anyone. But I’m seeing you let your mistakes slow you down in the moment, and that won’t get you anywhere.”

“I’m sorry,” Sachirou said. He let off the spigot and put the cap back on the bottle. It was slick with condensation, and the little plastic ridges dragged at his skin when he gripped it. He twisted hard. “I’ll do better next time.”

The look on Coach’s face told him he had said the wrong thing. He was tired, though, and he didn’t feel like trying to puzzle out what it was Coach wanted to hear. He bent his head politely, and when Coach didn’t say anything else, he went to change.

He left school grounds later, walking in the shade of the trees hanging over the embankment. He went over his mistakes carefully in his mind; they numbered either twelve or eleven depending on how he looked at them. Failure to follow up on multiple blocked spikes was a subset of failure to properly read approach patterns from the back row, unless it was a failure of reaction timing. He went back and forth but none of it settled. A dull staticky feeling climbed up his chest into his head. Panic, maybe, except panic was supposed to be shocking and this just felt familiar.

He looked at his hands. It was clear where the fault lay. When he dragged his knuckles against the stone of the embankment, the blood took a second to come. He leaned harder and kept walking, scraping his skin open as he went.

The straps of his backpack yanked him back so hard he almost lost his balance. “What are you _doing_?” someone said.

Sachirou turned around. It was that kid from the second cohort, Hoshiumi Kourai, tiny and sunburnt and looking personally insulted by what was, in fact, none of his business. Sachirou looked at his hand. He looked back at Hoshiumi Kourai. It seemed like kind of an obvious question.

“I mean it,” Kourai said, slinging his own backpack around onto his chest. He started digging inside, then stopped abruptly to stare at Sachirou. “Why were you doing that? What the hell?”

“I don’t know,” Sachirou said. He had scared Kourai. Only when he realized that did it turn real. Dizziness rolled over him. “I think—I just don’t like volleyball that much,” he said. His voice sounded wrong. Too small and far away.

Kourai kept staring at him. They had never really talked—the easy reason was that they were in different cohorts, but the other reason was that Kourai looked at things like he could see right through them, like a character in a manga with laser and x-ray vision. Like he could burn anything right up if he stared at it long enough.

“Okay,” Kourai said. “Why don’t you quit, then?”

Sachirou felt like he was about to laugh but that didn’t seem right. He swallowed back whatever was climbing up his throat. “What?” he said. “I—what?”

Kourai’s hand was out. Sachirou took what he offered: a bandage, a wet wipe from a blue and white pouch.

“It’s the wrong shape, but that’s all I have,” Kourai said. He meant the bandage. It was the waterproof kind, with a little pad and a lot of clear film around it. Sachirou held it loosely between thumb and forefinger.

“I can’t quit,” he said. He dabbed mechanically at his knuckles. The wet wipe smelled like something clean and unidentifiable, a smell with a name like Cold Cream or White Linen. It turned pink and then red. “I’m not someone who just gives up when they can’t get things right.”

“You’re definitely not getting it right,” Kourai said.

“What,” Sachirou said.

Kourai’s glance jerked towards the wall. Then it came back and fixed on Sachirou’s face again, curious and fierce. “Not like I’m trying to tell you what the whole point of volleyball is or something,” he said. “But that’s not it.”

For a second Sachirou wanted to defend himself. He sucked in a long breath and let it go. “No,” he said. “I guess not.”

He knew that. Hadn’t he known that? He had yet to figure out whether punishing yourself made you better. But he knew by now that it made you someone who got punished, and someone who enacted punishment.

“It’s Sachirou-kun, right?” Kourai said. “Hirugami. Wait, aren’t you the guy whose brother just went pro?”

“Right out of high school,” Sachirou said. “He went to Yurisei too.”

“So it runs in the family,” Kourai said, zipping his bag. He was still studying Sachirou with a skin-prickling focus. “That’s kind of cool.”

It was, Sachirou had always thought so. When he’d lived at home, Fukurou always dropped things to practice with him when he asked. “We’re lucky,” he had said once. “You and me and Shouko, we didn’t have to go far to find out what we’re good for.”

Yeah, he was lucky. He tried all the time to grab luck with both hands and turn it into something better and more lasting. If you didn’t do that you were wasting what you had been given. Too many people did that. Sachirou wondered how they weren’t ashamed.

_Why don’t you quit?_

Hoshiumi Kourai didn’t know anything about it. There was no way he understood. Maybe that was why Sachirou wanted to hear him say it again.

“I think you’re just burned out,” Kourai said. “Going at it so hard for so long, it’s no wonder.”

Had it been a long time? Shouldn’t he have more to show for it, if it was such a long time? Sachirou peeled the bandage from its wrapper. The pad only covered the knuckles of his pinky and ring fingers. The clear film stuck and raised up in ridges where his skin wrinkled. He turned his hand over and looked at it, the calluses, the whorled skin.

His nails were short because he bit them and then religiously filed down the ragged edges. When they grew out he bit them again. What did he have, after all that? If he made mistakes over and over again, what did he have? If he dropped the ball, his hands were empty. If he chewed himself up he would see the bone.

He clenched his fist and released it: the tendons slid under his skin and his skin moved under the clear plastic. That was what he had. The blood, and the quick of his nails, and the flesh. Something seized his chest, quick and all-consuming, and for a second he wanted to sit down right there in the road. But Kourai was there. He stayed standing.

“I could quit,” he said slowly, to test it out. “Or take a break.”

“Yeah!” Kourai said, sounding relieved. “That’s what I’m saying. Come back when you feel like it, or don’t. Find something that’s even more fun. It’s not like it’s the end of the world.”

Sachirou laughed finally; it sounded worse than it felt because his throat had gone rough and clogged. “Of course it’s not,” he said. That was something people said. It was so obvious it didn’t mean anything. Worlds were big, he couldn’t think of a single thing big enough to end them.

Slowly he walked over to the head of the stairs and sat down. The concrete was warm, the afternoon sun was streaming over the tops of the houses and falling in among the trees. He could see all the way to the river before the land dropped away and vanished. Even his own world was bigger than that.

“I have a yogurt drink, and an orange, and some pretzel sticks,” Kourai said, dropping down next to him. “What do you want?”

“The orange,” Sachirou said without thinking. “Wait—no, never mind. I’m not hungry, it’s fine—”

“Sure it’s fine,” Kourai said, and plunked the orange into his palm. He twisted the cap off his yogurt drink and took a long sip, extravagantly focused, like he was trying to prove it wasn’t poison. Sachirou wrapped his fingers around the orange.

Something heavy and warm and inescapable had him in its grip. The bright rooftops in the valley, the ordinary light over them. No, none of it ended. It was relentless in that way. His knuckles would scab over whether he wanted them to or not: tomorrow a little healed, and a little more the day after that. He had no choice in the matter.

So maybe he could give in to it. It was terrifying to give in to it.

He dug his thumb into the rind of the orange, just beside the stem. He pushed down through the skin and pulled it back, tearing the white pith as he went. The scent hit him bright and immediate, in a spray of tiny droplets. He held his hands stiff for a second to stop them shaking. Then he peeled the rest of the orange carefully. He rested his elbows on his knees and ate the whole thing with his head down, sticky-fingered, his right hand stinging.

**Author's Note:**

> me, addicted to using humor as insulation around the live wire of emotional vulnerability, looking at my 1.6k about the specific unnameable relief of realizing you don't have to destroy yourself: ah. there's no way I can make this funny is there
> 
> title lifted from "Faint Music" by Robert Hass.


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